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Crytek has to adjust for "different level of 'fair'" with Warface across regions

Speaking with Joshua Howard, executive producer for Warface, we learn that not all's 'fair' in war when it comes to regional expectations. The team have to adjust game balance for each market, like in Russia.

That doesn't mean Warface is unrecognisable in pace when you skip over regions, but the Crytek team had to "appreciate that 'fair' means different things" to the various camps.

What have Russians told Crytek about Warface? "They’ve told us that it’s a much bigger hit much faster than we expected, which is always a nice surprise," says Howard.

"They’ve told us that the pace of content that we release is something that they really enjoy, and it’s been good to hear from them what types of content they’d like to see more of, as opposed to not. We were producing so many guns per month, for example, and we decided there was a better rate for that," he added.

"It’s been good hearing from them on new types of content."

The Russian Warface community even convinced Crytek to produce full skin suits even though it wasn't part of any of their development plans. "Balancing wise, it’s been interesting watching how the Russian player plays, and for me, as someone who’s traditionally been playing with a North American/European audience, it’s been different, and understanding those differences has also been interesting," Howard explained.

"Especially when we’ve been able to contrast it from what we’ve learned from China, or Brazil or other regions. There’s also a different level of ‘fair’, or ‘balance’ that works in Russia, that might not work so well in the West. As a team, we’ve had to grow to appreciate that ‘fair’ means different things in different regions."

Howard says Crytek sees Warface as a "world-wide brand that has a lot of the same value, independent of some regional variation, but we’re proud to make some regional adaptations." That pride might not extend to the recent press of Warface's female soldiers bowing to those same 'cultural expectations' - which is drawing considerable heat.

"So there are parts of the game where, in absolute terms, Weapon A might be different in China or Russia than it is in the West, but what’s more important than are they all the same, is how does Weapon A compare to Weapon B. Those are fairly similar differences across all regions, so the absolute balance numbers themselves might be a little different."

"Local variety and local flavour is important, but we always do it with an air off trying to maintain what we feel the larger WarFace brand should be." Check out our full interview with Joshua Howard discussing Warface.